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LONG BEACH >> Seventy-four. It’s a number that haunted Thomas Manley until the day he died, one that brings his widow to tears whenever she recalls the prophecy her husband echoed before his heart finally broke.

In the early morning of June 3, 1969, the USS Frank E. Evans, whose home port was Long Beach, was in the midst of a training exercise with more than 40 ships on the South China Sea, off the coast of Vietnam, as part of a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization effort called Operation Sea Spirit, when an Australian aircraft carrier split through her and sent 74 American sailors to their deaths.

The Evans had previously sailed Vietnamese waters and was scheduled to continue supporting the war mission. But because the ship was operating outside of the war’s official combat zone when part of it plunged into the sea, the 74 names of those who died remain absent from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in the nation’s capital.

Prophetic statement

Manley, a 20-year-old boilerman 3rd class when the HMAS Melbourne collided with the Navy destroyer, survived and lived another 40 years.

“Before he died, he told me that the names wouldn’t be on the wall in his lifetime,” said Long Beach native Mary Manley, his widow, choking back tears. “I thought he was nuts. I really did.”

The Manleys, along with other surviving sailors, their families and loved ones of the dead, have worked with the USS Frank E. Evans Association to get the 74 names added to the wall.

While Thomas Manley rightly predicted the effort would be in vain at least until his death — he suffered a massive heart attack at age 60 on Feb. 9, 2009 — the 74 came one step closer to the sacred wall in Washington when, on the eve of Memorial Day this year, the House of Representatives passed an amendment to a defense authorization bill that urged the Department of Defense to add their names to the wall.

‘It went down bow up’

Steve Kraus, who had left Pomona to enlist in the Navy, was a 21-year-old signalman aboard the Evans. The ship carried 272 crewmen, including Kraus, who was on the forward section above the pilot house when the fatal collision occurred.

Around 3:15 a.m., Kraus noticed the Evans starting to make a broad turn, as opposed to the zigzag course it had taken during anti-submarine maneuvers as part of plane guard duty. The Evans mistakenly turned toward the Melbourne.

“I started spotting where the ships were,” Kraus said. “Melbourne had been starboard, but I didn’t see the ship. I went around the port side and still didn’t see them. I came back in front of the gun director and saw that the carrier was coming straight at us. I went to the signal shack and hit the communications buttons to the pilot house and said, ‘We’re about to be hit.’ Moments later, it T-boned us. We went hard starboard and they went hard left.”

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Kraus was tossed to the deck and immediately swam away from the ship.

“I could see the bow going down. It went down bow up,” Kraus said.

“When you’re in boot camp, one of the things they always tell you is stay with the ship,” he added. “They’re hard to sink. But in this situation, the way it hit, and where it hit, it went down in two to three minutes.”

Kraus, now an Oceanside resident and vice president of the Evans Association, swam back toward the wreck and was able to grab a deck board. He was in the water 40 minutes.

“The first part was scary,” Kraus said. “I was alone by myself in complete darkness and it seemed like I had swam a long ways away from the forward ship after it went down. I couldn’t see anything. It was a feeling of loneliness and desperation.”

‘I was saved’

Roy “Pete” Peters was standing messenger mid-watch when he and his fellow crewmen were thrown forward, as the lights went out and steam and ocean water filled the engine room. With cries and prayers heard all around him, the 22-year-old Peters looked for an air pocket as the water rose to his chest. “I’ve never been so close to death in my life,” said Peters, who lives in Redondo Beach. “It’s just that I was probably seconds to death and I had given up. For whatever reason, I was saved. One of the guys found that outboard hatch and all of us got out of there.”

Among the dead were three brothers from Nebraska — Gary Loren Sage, Gregory Allen Sage, Kelly Jo Sage. At least a third killed in the collision were from California and about half of those were from the Los Angeles area, including five listed as from Long Beach on a plaque at the Long Beach Naval Memorial behind the Aquarium of the Pacific — William Daniel Brown II, Eugene Francis Lehmen, Lawrence John Reilly Jr., John Raymond Spray and Richard Arthur Thibodeau.

All who died were on the forward half of the ship.

The damaged Melbourne turned around, and its crew rescued those who survived the deadly collision, treating them and transferring them to the American carrier Kearsarge, with the sailors eventually going to Subic Bay in the Philippines.

Only one of the dead was recovered. Kenneth Glines was buried at Mount Washington Cemetery in his hometown of Independence, Mo.

Misinterpreted message

According to Associated Press reports in 1969, Lt. j.g. Ronald C. Ramsey of Long Beach was in control of the ship when the collision occurred. Ramsey had misinterpreted a radio message from the Melbourne about the carrier’s position. Lt. j.g. James Hopson, who was also on the bridge, was reprimanded but never court martialed. He received a nonjudicial reprimand.

Cmdr. Albert S. McLemore, skipper of the Evans, was reprimanded for negligence. McLemore was sleeping in his cabin when disaster struck. According to an AP report, the charge against McLemore was that he would be required on the bridge if there were maneuvers, which he was informed would likely happen, and he didn’t leave instructions to be awakened before the maneuvers.

McLemore’s defense was that he never received a message from the carrier that operations would require the Evans to change stations, and that he indeed informed officers to inform him of any needed changes. Ramsey said he failed to awaken McLemore, according to the AP report.

Capt. John Philip Stevenson, skipper of the Melbourne, was acquitted during an Australian court-martial of two charges of negligence, but later resigned the Royal Australian Navy.

The remaining half of the Evans, which was launched during World War II and had sailed out of Long Beach in 1969, was eventually sunk in fleet target practice.

‘A war that sank, and took a ship with it’

The Evans was about 110 nautical miles out of the official combat zone when the crewmen died.

The Pentagon has repeatedly denied requests to have the 74 names added to the war memorial. A bill introduced in 2001 by former Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Long Beach, known as the Fairness to All Vietnam Veterans Act, sought to re-examine policies for placement on the memorial wall but ultimately failed.

The Evans Association points to the ship’s supporting of the war effort in Vietnam, including gunfire support for Operation Daring Rebel, southeast of Da Nang in May 1969. They also note that exceptions have been made to the combat zone rule, including in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan ordered 68 Marines who died on a flight outside the combat zone on their way back to Vietnam be added to the wall, which was dedicated in 1982.

“We don’t see any distinction between those situations and the one we were in,” Kraus said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, who said he has “gone to three secretaries of defense” about the matter, including the current secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, a few weeks ago, said the fact that the Evans was sunk outside the designated combat zone “shouldn’t preclude them from having their sacrifice memorialized on that wall.”

“There have been exceptions made, and I think the case for an exception here is about as compelling as you can get,” Schiff said, adding that he doesn’t think honoring the 74 on the wall in Washington detracts from the more than 58,000 troops honored there.

In an email, Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, spokesman for the Pentagon, said “Rep. Schiff discussed his concerns during a visit to the Pentagon. The department is aware of the representative’s concerns.”

Seeking closure

Schiff has pushed for the 74 sailors to be included on the memorial since he was first approached a few years ago by Tim Wendler, a Pasadena resident, who lost his father, Thibodeau, before his second birthday. His mother became a widow at 21 years old.

Wendler has visited the memorial in Washington and was moved by the experience. Still, there is a panel missing from the wall, he said.

“For us, I think it would give some closure,” said Wendler, who acts as a liaison to relatives of the lost. “One of the things that’s tough to deal with when someone’s lost at sea is, you don’t have that closure that many people have found.”

Temecula-based journalist and author Louise Esola, who is aiming to release in August a self-published book titled “American Boys: The true story of the Lost 74 of the Vietnam War,” says the government tried to quickly pull the Evans collision from the Vietnam narrative.

“Even back in 1969 they were trying to keep this collision off the radar, because right before was (the battle of) Hamburger Hill,” Esola said. “(President Richard) Nixon announced (the first) troop withdrawals on June 8, 1969. The last thing the Nixon administration needed at that point was 74 Americans dead.”

In her book, Esola says a first draft press release has the Evans sinking 200 miles off Vietnam on May 3, 1969 — the date was later corrected. Later press releases put the collision 650 miles off the coast of Manila, which was true, but it was not the closest land. That was Vietnam.

“Some higher authority said get this away from Vietnam,” Esola said.

Still, media from across the country immediately published reports of the collision.

Esola says the only reason the Evans left Long Beach was to participate in the Vietnam War, and the surviving members and their families will fight along with relatives of the dead until they are honored on the memorial wall.

“This book is not about a ship that sank,” she said. “It’s about a war that sank and took a ship with it.”

Armed with love

A memorial will take place at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Naval Memorial in Long Beach. It’s the 45th anniversary of the collision, and Mary Manley plans to be in attendance.

It’s been a long journey since Thomas Manley returned home from the collision and told her, “I’m only going to tell you about it once. Don’t ask me again. I’m not going to talk about it.”

She found out about the Evans Association in 2000 while researching the ship online. Manley urged her husband to attend a memorial, which he was reluctant to do. But after the memorial, he broke down and sobbed, she said.

“He was like a new person,” Manley said, adding that he would go to several reunions afterward.

A lifelong Long Beach resident who attended Jordan High School, Manley, 66, speaks softly and gives way to tears when thinking about the 74 names missing from the wall.

But Manley also shared a sense of humor with her husband that still lives on. The Evans 74, over Thomas Manley’s objections while still alive, is memorialized on his widow’s arm.

“I told him I wanted to get a tattoo of a heart — red, white and blue,” Mary Manley said. “He said ‘over my dead body will you ever have a tattoo.’ He died in February. On my birthday, April 3, that year, I got my tattoo.”